7 Habits of Highly Effective People [Summary & Takeaways]

Want to be a more prosperous and effective individual? Then you need Stephen Covey’s best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The book provides a solid framework for developing the healthy habits necessary for success in work and life — whatever that means to you.

But what if you don’t have time to read all 432 pages? Don’t sweat it. I summarized the entire offering below.

The Foundations of Success

Before I discuss the seven habits in detail, we have to do some groundwork. But “Why?” I hear you ask… Covey argues that this foundational knowledge is necessary for successfully implementing the seven habits.

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Here’s a brief overview of the foundations Covey asks you to explore:

What does success mean to you? True success is more than just achieving wealth or fame. Instead, it necessitates personal growth and fulfillment.

Paradigms. These models for perception and understanding shape how we view and interact with the world. Covey argues that a paradigm shift is necessary to cultivate effective habits.

Principles. Covey defines principles as fundamental truths you must live and internalize to achieve lasting success. He identifies several principles, such as integrity, humility, and continuous learning, essential for personal effectiveness.

Consider character ethic vs. personality ethic. Pre-1920, the general view of success was based on the above principles. Fundamental traits like integrity, courage, and patience were viewed as the basis of success. Post-1920, the view of success shifted, emphasizing secondary traits and skills that support a robust public image.

Many seek quick solutions to problems through shortcuts and techniques from successful individuals or organizations.

However, shortcuts often fail to address the root cause of the problem. Instead, as Covey emphasizes, the problem lies in how you perceive it.

To bring about genuine and lasting change, you need to undergo a paradigm shift. That means changing your fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and values.

That’s where the seven habits of highly effective people come in.

These seven habits are grouped into three categories: Private victory (habits 1-3), Public victory (habits 4-6), and Renewal (habit 7). I’ll start with an overview and then discuss the habits in each category.

Private Victory Habits

Private victory habits focus on personal effectiveness. They’re habits you can implement to improve your mindset, take responsibility for your decisions, and move towards independence.

1. Be proactive.

Proactive people take the initiative. In short, they act instead of being acted upon.

Being proactive means taking radical responsibility for your problems instead of giving energy to circumstances and things beyond your control.

At a Glance

Take responsibility for your life and decisions.
Focus on what you can control.
Proactive people choose how to respond to a given situation.
Reactive people focus on the things they cannot control and cultivate a narrative of victimhood.
Practice proactivity by making commitments to yourself and sticking to them.

To be proactive, you must focus on your Circle of Influence (what you have control over) within your Circle of Concern (everything you’re personally concerned about). In other words, you must work on the things you can actually do something about.

When you do this, the positive energy you exert will cause your Circle of Influence to expand.

Reactive people, conversely, focus on things in their Circle of Concern but not in their Circle of Influence. This leads them to blame external factors, emanate negative energy, and cause their Circle of Influence to shrink.

Key Lessons

Challenge yourself to test the principle of proactivity by doing the following:

1. Replace reactive language with proactive language.

Reactive = “He makes me so mad.”
Proactive = “I control my own feelings.”

2. Convert reactive tasks into proactive ones.

In Action

Recently, I shared an experience in my article about entrepreneurial competencies.

As a marketing business owner whose revenue primarily comes from my writing services, late 2022 to mid-2023 was … unnerving.

Overnight (or at least that’s what it felt like), I suddenly wondered if AI would wipe out my entire business.

Was I scared? Absolutely.

However, I reframed the situation by focusing on what I could do, rather than what I couldn’t.

Here’s what that reframing looked like.

I couldn’t control what Open AI did with ChatGPT.

I could control how I approached my craft.

I couldn’t spit out 10,000 words in mere seconds like AI.

I could write from a first-person perspective, demonstrating my real human experience with a topic.

The crux? Where AI content eroded trust, I could rebuild it. I chose to focus my energies on that.

2. Begin with the end in mind

For habit number two, Covey invites you to imagine your funeral… stick with me.

This thought exercise requires you to think about how you want to be remembered. And what would you like your friends and family to say about you?

Beginning with the end in mind means clarifying your goals and values to guide your actions. To enact this habit successfully, you should be aware of concepts like leadership, rescripting, and being principle-centered. (I’ll go through those below!)

At a Glance

Develop a personal mission statement — a set of values and principles towards which you will direct your actions.
Make sure that your actions don’t contradict your guiding principles.
Define your goals.
Use your goals as a guide to make decisions and prioritize your actions.

Leadership

Beginning with the end in mind applies to businesses.
Being a leader involves setting an organization’s strategic vision and asking, “What are we trying to accomplish?”
Before you, as an individual or organization, can start setting and achieving goals, you must be able to identify your values. This process may involve some rescripting to be able to assert your values.

Rescripting

Rescripting is recognizing ineffective scripts written for you and then changing those scripts by proactively writing new ones built on your values.
Identify your center. Whatever is at the center of your life will be the source of your security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Centering on Principle

Covey notes that none of the above centers are optimal. Instead, you should strive to be principle-centered.
Identify the timeless, unchanging principles by which you must live your life. This will guide you to align your behaviors with your beliefs and values.

Key Lessons

Challenge yourself to test the principle of beginning with the end in mind by doing the following:

1. Break down different roles in your life and list five goals for each. This can include personal, professional, and community roles.

2. Define what scares you. Public speaking? Critical feedback after writing a book? Write down the worst-case scenario for your biggest fear. Then, visualize how you‘ll handle this situation. Finally, write down exactly how you’ll handle it.

In Action

Anyone who’s only come into my ‘sphere’ in the last couple of years might be surprised to know this… I used to be a people-pleaser in many aspects of my life.

Because of this, I never felt truly secure — the wind blew, and I felt like it would blow me along with it.

I must emphasize: This was never the case when it came to the big things in life, like the difference between right and wrong. I’ve always had a strong set of guiding values and principles. But personal and professional goals? That was a different story.

When I started to set clear goals (aka daring to say, “I want this thing in life or work, and I will move towards it”), things started to change. I felt more energized. I had less friction in my personal relationships. Plus, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but I started to earn more money.

One example of goal setting was choosing a financial target for my writing work for the first time, well, ever. Here’s what that value and principle-led goal looked like:

Guiding values and principles. I will always center ethics and truth in my words. That means never writing for or promoting a product I don’t believe in or taking an unethical action for financial gain.
Define your goals. I will work towards doubling my per-piece rate in one year.

Long story short? I more than doubled my rate in the designated time frame without compromising my principles. More on that later.

3. Put first things first.

Putting first things first is the practical execution of habits one and two. You must be proactive and use your guiding principles to determine the most important activities in front of you. And then execute them accordingly.

At a Glance

Be disciplined and manage your time.
Determine important tasks and execute them.
Prioritize important tasks over urgent but less important ones.
Prioritize your time and energy on the essential things in your life.
Learn to say “no” to less important things.

Urgent vs. Important Tasks

All of your tasks exist on a matrix of urgency and importance. Unfortunately, we tend to react most to urgent matters while neglecting important activities that may not be pressing at the moment.

Quadrant I. Important and urgent tasks like crises and deadlines can consume us and lead to burnout. While you must address these matters, you shouldn’t align your mission statement with putting out fires.
Quadrant II. Important, non-urgent matters are at the heart of effective personal management. We know these are important but often neglect them for more urgent issues. Important, non-urgent matters require discipline to tackle and bolster your effectiveness.
Quadrant III. We spend most of our time reacting to matters that seem urgent when, in reality, their perceived urgency is based on the priorities and expectations of others. This leads to short-term focus, feeling out of control, and shallow or broken relationships.
Quadrant IV. Non-urgent and unimportant tasks are a waste of time. Still, it’s easy to pour energy into trivial, unimportant tasks. Of course, we all deserve rest and pleasant activities. That said, you must first prioritize activities aligned with your guiding principles.

To focus your time in Quadrant II, you must learn to say “no” to other activities, sometimes ones that seem urgent. You also need to be able to delegate effectively.

Plus, focusing on Quadrant II means you’re thinking ahead, working on the roots, and preventing crises from happening! This helps you implement the Pareto Principle: 80% of your results come from 20% of your time.

When prioritizing or working through tasks, you should always maintain a primary focus on relationships and results and a secondary focus on time.

Key Lessons

Here are some ways you can practice putting first things first:

1. Identify a Quadrant II activity you’ve been neglecting. Write it down and commit to implementing it.

2. Create your time management matrix to start prioritizing.

3. Estimate how much time you spend in each quadrant. Then, log your time over three days. How accurate was your estimate? How much time did you spend in Quadrant II (the most important quadrant)?

In Action

Remember during the last habit (begin with the end in mind) when I talked about setting myself a financial goal? More specifically, I wanted to work towards doubling my rate over a year.

To do this, I had to look beyond the urgent tasks in the present and start with a Quadrant II activity — planning for the future.

My plan involved:

Breaking down my rate increase into incremental steps (i.e., 25% increase per quarter)
Identifying the skills I’d need to justify each price increase (i.e., starting to create subject matter expert-driven content)
Reverse engineering a plan to get there (i.e., finding opportunities to gather quotes from experts for existing clients)

Some folks will say just hike your rates and see who says yes. And if I’m being honest, I was probably at a competency level where I could justify an increase much sooner than I did.

But that ‘suck it and see’ price increase has never felt right to me personally, so following that approach would go against my principles. Instead, I didn’t want to ‘get paid my worth’ just because. I first wanted to evidence my worth.

Public Victory Habits

The following habits focus on cultivating successful interactions with others. Long story short? You can only achieve public victory after private triumph.

Habits 1-3 enable you to develop independence, while habits 4-6 aim to establish interdependent relationships where you can effectively work together to achieve common goals.

4. Think win-win.

You should seek mutually beneficial outcomes in all your interactions.

At a Glance

Seek mutual benefit in all interactions and relationships.
Look for solutions that benefit all parties involved.

First, you need to grasp the paradigms of human interaction. Covey highlights the following six beliefs:

Win-Win. Mutual benefit is the best approach to achieve a satisfactory outcome for all parties involved.
Win-Lose. One person‘s gain is another person’s loss. It’s a competitive approach to human interaction where one party wins and the other loses.
Lose-Win. Putting the needs and desires of others before your own is the best way to achieve a satisfactory outcome.
Lose-Lose. When two or more parties disagree, no one wins, and everyone loses.
Win. Achieving personal success without considering the needs and desires of others is the best way to approach human interaction.
Win-Win or No Deal. If you cannot achieve a mutually satisfactory outcome, it’s better to have no deal. This paradigm promotes finding a solution that benefits all parties involved or walking away.

Strive for win-win situations.

In win-lose and lose-win scenarios, one person gets what they want at the expense of another. These types of outcomes result in poor relationship health.
Win-win or no deal is a backup. Having the option to walk away prevents us from manipulating others to achieve our goals.

In solving for win-win, you must consider two factors: consideration and courage. First, take a look at the following chart:

Abundance Mentality

An abundance mentality is necessary to create Win-Win situations.
Abundance mentality is the belief that there is enough of everything to go around, including resources, opportunities, and success.
People with an abundance mentality tend to be more open-minded, flexible, and creative.
An abundance mentality fosters collaboration and cooperation, allowing people to work together and achieve success for all parties.

Scarcity Mentality

Scarcity mentality is the belief that there is a limited amount of everything, and one person’s success must come at the expense of another.
Most people operate with this mentality, and it leads to feelings of envy, unhappiness, and victimhood.
A scarcity mentality limits a person’s ability to see opportunities and makes solving for win-win scenarios nearly impossible.

Regarding interpersonal leadership, the more genuine our character is, the higher our level of proactivity; the more committed we are to win-win, the more powerful our influence will be.

The spirit of win-win can’t survive in an environment of competition. As an organization, we must align our reward systems with our goals and values and have systems in place to support win-win.

Key Lessons

Get yourself to start thinking win-win with these challenges:

1. Consider an upcoming interaction in which you’ll attempt to reach an agreement or solution. Write down what the other person is looking for and consider how you can meet those needs.

2. Identify three important relationships in your life and consider their balance. Do you give more than you take? Write down ten ways to give more than you take in each relationship.

3. Identify your interaction tendencies and how they affect others. Are they win-lose? Can you identify the source of that approach? Determine whether or not your approach serves you well in your relationships.

In Action

Let’s continue with my example from lessons 2-3.

A quick refresher: My goal was to double my freelance writing rates in a year while sticking to my guiding principles. (Centering ethics and truth, in my words.)

One of the hardest things about raising your rates is the impact it has on your existing client roster.

Why?

Because even if they wanted to, some of your clients simply can’t afford to renew your services at an increased rate.

I was SO nervous about this.

I loved every single one of my clients, and I didn’t want to outprice them. But I’d evidenced my value, and it was time to raise my rates. Now the question was, how can I create a win-win situation?

Here’s what I did for clients who could no longer afford to work with me on a recurring monthly retainer:

Gave a clear timeline and advanced notice of when my rates would increase.
Committed to finishing any work before that timeline at my existing rate.
Offered to help them find, vet, and onboard a new writer at a rate they could afford at no extra charge.

And do you know what happened? Many of those clients still return to me for one-off writing projects that need an extra special touch.

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Habit 5 requires you to listen actively and empathetically before communicating your own views. Simply put: Listen with the intent to understand, not to respond. In doing so, you can cultivate trust and respect with others.

Seeking to understand requires being open-minded and nonjudgmental while avoiding imposing your biases and assumptions on others. The result is improved communication, deeper relationships, and more effective collaboration.

At a Glance

Listen empathetically.
Seek to understand others’ perspectives before expressing your own.

Reflective Listening

Reflective listening is a technique that Covey recommends you practice to understand others’ perspectives.
Reflective listening involves paraphrasing the other person’s message and checking for accuracy to ensure you understand their perspective correctly.

Autobiographical Listening

Autobiographical listening means listening with our perspective in mind. When we do this, we tend to respond in one of four ways.

Evaluate. Agree or disagree with what is said.
Probe. Ask questions from our frame of reference.
Advise. Give counsel based on our own experience.
Interpret. Try to determine the person’s motives and behavior based on our motives and behavior.

If we instead focus on empathetic listening, we see dramatic results in improved communication.

The second part of Habit 5 is “ … then to be understood.” This is equally critical in achieving win-win solutions.

When you present your ideas clearly, in the context of a deep understanding of the other person’s needs and concerns, you significantly increase your credibility and effectiveness.

Key Lessons

Here are a few ways to get yourself in the habit of seeking first to understand:

1. Next time you watch two people communicate, cover your ears and watch. What emotions are they sharing that might not come across through words alone? For example, was one person or the other more interested in the conversation? Write down what you noticed.

2. Root your presentations in empathy. Begin by understanding the audience‘s point of view. What problems are they facing? How is what you’re about to say offering a solution to their problems?

In Action

You guessed it, we’re circling back to the example from the last four lessons.

To create a win-win scenario for clients who could no longer afford to work with me (as outlined in lesson four), I first listened to their concerns.

I genuinely had empathy for my clients — that was clear. Simply put, I really listened, in a way that showed I cared about what they had to say. And it was obvious that I wanted to understand their perspective.

After they told me their worries, I repeated them to make sure I understood. Only once I was sure I understood did I suggest a solution.

6. Synergize.

The synergize habit emphasizes the power of collaboration. It encourages you to look for opportunities to collaborate to create outcomes greater than the sum of your parts.

The key to synergy and collaboration is valuing people’s differences. The real kicker? You should then seek ways to combine strengths to reach more significant outcomes than you could achieve alone.

At a Glance

Work collaboratively with others to achieve goals.
Working collaboratively helps you create more significant outcomes than any individual could achieve alone.

Covey outlines several principles for achieving synergy.

Value differences.

Recognize and appreciate the unique abilities, experiences, and perspectives of others.
Seek to combine people’s different strengths to achieve collaborative success.

Create a third alternative.

Look for solutions that go beyond simply compromising between two opposing viewpoints.
Find ways to create new solutions that address everyone’s needs.

Listen to understand.

We must empathetically listen to understand and value others’ differences.
Listen to understand, not to respond.

Be open to feedback.

Welcome feedback from others without involving your ego.
Use feedback to improve your ideas and actions.

Build relationships with trust and respect.

Trust and respect are essential for achieving synergistic outcomes.
Strive for honesty and openness as the foundation of your relationships.
Create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, exchanging feedback, and collaborating.

Key Lessons

1. Make a list of people who irritate you. How are their views different? Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine how it feels to be them.

Next time you disagree with one of those people, try to understand their concerns and why they disagree. The better you can understand them, the easier it will be to change their mind — or yours.

2. Make a list of people with whom you get along well. How are their views different? Next, write down a situation where you had excellent teamwork and synergy. Why? What conditions were met to reach synergy? How can you recreate those conditions again?

In Action

In the summer of 2021, I was promoted from freelance copywriter to content manager within a month.

Here’s the thing: I’d supervised before but never managed.

Suddenly, I was responsible for not just a team but also building a new content department from the ground up. Phew, I had to learn fast.

The thing I learned the quickest?

If you want your team to be open to and feel safe receiving feedback from you, first show that it works both ways.

Here’s an example of how I did that. Every time I released new guidelines or workflows, I emphasized that I didn’t just want but welcomed genuine feedback from the team.

Questions about the guidelines? No sweat. Ask ‘em, and I’ll clarify, then amend the documents. The workflow doesn’t sit quite right? Cool. Let me know why and how, so we can work together to improve them.

At the end of the day, documentation has to be crystal clear for all involved. Workflows have to work for the folks implementing tasks and those overseeing them. But the real bonus? By making this a collaborative activity, I built trust and respect within the team.

7. Sharpen the saw.

Sharpening the saw means continually honing your personal development through deliberate actions that renew and recharge your energy. The result is a happy, holistically healthy, and effective individual.

At a Glance

Take time to renew and improve yourself for continued success.
Renew yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

It’s easy to get caught up in your work and responsibilities and neglect to prioritize yourself. Covey posits that we must take the time to “sharpen our saw” to remain effective.

The crux? Prioritize self-care. After all, if you aren’t healthy and happy, you won’t be able to help others.

Covey discusses four categories of renewal and outlines how you can look after your health in those areas.

Physical Renewal

Your body should have the health and vitality to tackle life’s demands. It’s challenging to be effective if you feel sick or physically unhealthy. Activities that renew physical energy include:

Exercising: walking, running, playing sports, lifting weights.
Eating healthy: eating fresh fruits and vegetables and being mindful of processed foods and sugar.
Staying hydrated.
Spending time in nature.
Getting enough sleep.

Mental Renewal

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Just like exercising, you should make concerted efforts to prioritize renewing your mental energy. Consider some activities that stimulate and calm the mind:

Meditation.
Reading books.
Learning new things: attend classes, workshops, or seminars.
Pursuing hobbies and interests.
Playing an instrument.
Watching a documentary.

Mental renewal is crucial for maintaining a positive outlook and staying sharp in an increasingly digital world that always seems “on.”

Spiritual Renewal

Spiritual renewal involves reflecting and solidifying your values and beliefs while cultivating a sense of purpose in life. Spiritual renewal can include engaging in things like:

Meditation.
Prayer.
Volunteering.
Journaling.
Self-reflection.
Silence and gratitude.
Fasting.

Taking the time to look after your spiritual health makes you more empathetic, balanced, and effective.

Social/Emotional Renewal Habits

Humans are social, emotional beings. You should take care of your health in these areas by reflecting on your emotions and relationships. Social/emotional renewal can mean some of the following:

Spending time with loved ones.
Hanging out with friends.
Going to a concert.
Having a meaningful conversation.
Practicing empathy.
Hosting a dinner party.
Distancing yourself from toxic people.

Sharpening the saw is crucial for maintaining success with the previous six habits. If you fail to look after your physical, mental, social, and spiritual health? Well, taking care of others is much more challenging.

Key Lessons

1. List renewal activities you enjoy and sort them according to the above categories. Make it a goal to do one renewal activity from each category per week.

2. Identify the essential areas of renewal for your personality. For example, some people are extroverted and might need to focus more on social renewal. That said, others might need to prioritize physical renewal over the rest.

In Action

There’s a running joke between me and my friends: If you have a problem, Rachael will suggest yoga as the solution.

Seriously, it’s true. Well, maybe not for something like a flat tire (maybe?). But if you need to renew yourself on a physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional level, start a regular yoga practice. (If you want to bump up your social activity, find a group class!)

I’ve been practicing yoga every day for the last three years, and I cannot tell you how much it helps me balance work-life stress.

If you want to explore the mental, spiritual, and emotional aspects of yoga as well as the physical side, I recommend Our Echo Yoga.

To focus on mental, spiritual, and emotional renewal, try The Yoga Ranger Studio with Aprille Walker. (Her extended Yin practices are beautiful.)

And if you don’t have much time? Yoga With Bird offers accessible and quick flows to start your day on the right foot.

Turning Habits Into Action

You don’t have to read all 432 pages of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to level up your life. After reading this summary, try out some of the exercises listed above. Once you find a habit that works for you, make sure to practice it regularly so it sticks.